


How the Qunari Lost Her Horns

by em_gnat



Category: Dragon Age Inquisition - Fandom
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Qunari, Sad childhood memories, Vashoth, everyone's got them, f!Adaar - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 18:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4315629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_gnat/pseuds/em_gnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kamal Adaar tells the story that everyone wants to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Qunari Lost Her Horns

You want to know how I broke my horns, don’t you?

It doesn’t offend me, really. You’ve been much more polite about it that many people I’ve met in the past.

Everyone wants to know, you see, but most just blurt it out. They _demand_.

_“Hey, giant! Did you lose that horn fighting the rams during spring rut? Did it snap off like a twig? What kind of force would that take, do you think, to snap a Qunari horn?”_

When I was 16, a drunk tried to test his blade against them, and I burned his hand with magefire until his fingers smelled like a lamb shank.

I am never surprised by the number of animals that humans compare me to, but when human flesh is roasting, it smells just like any other meat turning on a spit.

But you didn’t ask me about that.

You're wondering how I broke my horns, so I’ll tell you.

I didn’t break my horns.

When I was a little girl, I was so proud when my horns sprouted. It made my teeth ache and my temples feel tight, but I was so proud of them. I would touch the buds where they grew like tough little weeds, and I would take my parents hands and place them there. _Look, ma. Look, da. They’re getting bigger. See?_ See?

My parents did not have large horns. What they had were short, gnarled protrusions that looked like the stumps of chopped down oak trees. It gave them rather humanish silhouettes.

My mother never raised her voice unless it was to sing. My father never raised his hand unless it was to sew. My mother liked to talk about plants, about politics, about bees and wool yarn and everything under the sun. She knew a great deal about everything, and always had some tidbit of knowledge to impart upon all those around her.

My father embroidered every scrap of clothing I wore and every other piece of cloth in the house. Women would come from the village and ask him to decorate the hems of their wedding dresses. He had giant, scarred hands. Faded slashes from knives and lances crisscrossed his knuckles and palms. I never saw him pick up a sword, so I thought that all the scars were from his sewing needles though he never slipped up, not once, in all the time I watched him work.

But as my horns grew longer and longer, my father’s hands stilled on his work. My mother did not speak as often. Sometimes, I would go out, to feed chickens or run an errand down the road, and I would return to hear them talking, low and intently, in Qunlat; that language my mother would not teach me, though she loved to teach. They would see me and grow silent, and my father would force a smile, and then they would not speak to one another for the rest of the day.

It only took a year’s time for my horns to take their shape, black and backward spiraling with elegantly hooked tips. I thought they were most perfect things in the world, and they were part of me. They made me feel noble and strong, like a queen wearing her crown. In my childish daydreams, Queen Anora herself would invite me to her palace in Denerim, and she would admire my horns so much that she would have a crown made in imitation of them.

Then one day, my mother and father called me inside from the yard, sat me down on the floor, and cut off my horns.

My father sat cross-legged beside me and held my hands as my mother approached with the saw she used to trim the fruit trees in the garden. At first I didn’t quite understand what they meant to do, but when my mother attempted to explain, I began to cry. I continued to cry as she stopped trying to explain and instead set to the task with a fierce look in her eye. My mother sawed the left horn off in larger and larger pieces until all that remained was a broken nub. Then, she filed the edge soft with an iron file.

By the time she began work on the other horn, I was sobbing inconsolably. My father, who had been holding my hands in his big, scarred palms, began crying too, just as loudly and miserably as I was. And it was _awful_ because I had never seen either of my parents cry before, yet there he was, my big, calm father, with tears streaming down his face, trying to keep his lips closed over his own blubbering, while I wailed and wailed and wailed like the world was ending.

My mother stopped before she finished cutting the second horn, unable to go on, but the damage was done. One of my horns was now little more than a stub, and the other one was half it’s original size. I lay face down on the floor, my hands patting at the ruined ends of my once noble horns, while my father sniffled and rubbed my back, and my mother sang a song about a rabbit and a hare and how they are not the same creature, though they look alike.

She had a lovely singing voice, my mother, but she only ever sang songs in the common parlance. Thinking about it now, I realize she must have known so many different songs in Qunlat: lullabies and warnings and rhymes to make you remember. But I only ever heard her sing common songs, the ones that came from the mouths of every bandit and farmer in the Hinterlands.

My parents wanted the Qun to die in their hearts. It had hurt them so much that they had cut their own horns off in defiance when they had become Tal-Vashoth. They had wanted me to grow up knowing nothing of the ways they had been forced to live by.

But my horns had not been the horns of a Qunari child.

I do not think much about the Qun, but I _do_ think about my horns.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on so long. I never know how to end a story right, but you’ve been very patient with me. Here, have another drink. Let’s sing a tavern song. I know one about rabbits and hares.


End file.
